tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post2490926400163171080..comments2024-01-28T03:56:39.351-08:00Comments on TOM CLARK: Turbulence and Serenity: van Gogh at Auxers, June-July 1890: Last StrokesUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger12125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-84440068418589761522015-07-25T10:16:36.219-07:002015-07-25T10:16:36.219-07:00Billoo and Vassilis,
Art and poetry thank you fo...Billoo and Vassilis, <br /><br />Art and poetry thank you for your lucidity!<br /><br />Vassilis, it was a home delivery, and the midwife is still gasping (though not so much from the proper labour of the occasion as from tending to the shrieking maniac in the comment-box lobby, who when last monitored was babbling on about Vincent's poor brother Theo being "probably bipolar too").<br /><br />Billoo, I'm the same way about museums, or was, and I'm sure the lines are much longer now.TChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05915822857461178942noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-43658122662926536942015-07-23T11:07:44.946-07:002015-07-23T11:07:44.946-07:00A labor of love, Tom--thanks for admitting us into...A labor of love, Tom--thanks for admitting us into the delivery room.vazambam (Vassilis Zambaras)https://www.blogger.com/profile/14515165428574974933noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-10168509489622488562015-07-23T08:59:51.354-07:002015-07-23T08:59:51.354-07:00Thanks for this wonderful post, Tom. Have always w...Thanks for this wonderful post, Tom. Have always wanted to see 'the undergrowth with two figures' which for some reason makes me think of:<br /><br />I have come to take your place, sister,<br />At the high fire in the forest's heart.<br />Your eyes have grown dull, your tears cloudy,<br />Your hair is grey.<br /><br />You don't understand the songs birds sing<br />Anymore, nor stars, nor summer lightning.<br />Don't hear it when the women strike<br />The tambourine; yet you fear the silence.<br /><br />I have come to take your place, sister,<br />At the high fire in the forest's heart'...<br /><br />'You've come to put me in the grave.<br />Where is your shovel and your spade?<br />You're carrying just a flute.<br />I'm not going to blame you.<br /><br />Sadly, a long time ago<br />My voice fell mute.<br /><br />Have my clothes to wear,<br />Answer my fears with silence,<br />Let the wind blow<br />Through your hair, smell of the lilac.<br />You have come by a hard road<br />To be lit up by this fire.'<br /><br />And one went away, ceding<br />The place to another, wandered,<br />Like a blind woman reading<br />An unfamiliar narrow path<br /><br />And still it seemed to her a flame<br />Was close..<br />In her hand a tambourine<br />And she was like a white flag,<br />And like the light of a beacon.<br />-----Anna Akhmatova<br /><br />Was not overwhelmed by the paintings I saw in Amsterdam. Not sure if that was just fatigue (from waiting in a very long line).billoohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10716970909272480118noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-17801829362755605722015-07-23T04:14:48.702-07:002015-07-23T04:14:48.702-07:00Many thanks Sandra, Nora, Abdal-Hayy -- a thousand...Many thanks Sandra, Nora, Abdal-Hayy -- a thousand heartfelt dots connecting the countless billion loose ends of the material world, rubbing up together or flying past one another unnoticed, finally coming together, or falling apart, yet certainly and in any case getting on with the show, or else not, beyond all argument. <br /><br />Vincent happy-happy today, we're all at the moment up in the imaginary tree house quaffing a tall cool beaker of lead paint spiked with absinthe in his honour. <br /><br />And it's the very remedy for our queasy "public space" inbox this morning -- jammed as it is with yet more deranged "expert"-loony "I've got tons of money" psycho-blather, symptom postulation, limb-tip speculation, conspiracy theory, the shrink did it, the girl did it, the shrink was bipolar, or no everybody was bipolar, or else wasn't, and it's all so, like, unfair...<br /><br />Victimology is endless, art eternal, there's a difference.<br /><br />(The cats wisely decided to abstain from this congenial virtual-arboreal celebration, pleading extreme seniority.)TChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05915822857461178942noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-20344044468574004142015-07-22T23:14:07.044-07:002015-07-22T23:14:07.044-07:00A landscape poem from Turkey, in November of 2013:...A landscape poem from Turkey, in November of 2013:<br /><br />There were chickens and geese<br />and strange pointy goose-tongues as<br />they hacked their greetings or<br />admonitions at us through the<br />fence<br /><br />Then later sheep and straggly<br />odorless rose bushes and a <br />bright orange flower with<br />sheep in the distance<br /><br />A bare and barren landscape<br />with dry grasses rough hedges and<br />bluish mountains in the distance<br />that Van Gogh with bamboo pens<br />and sepia and India ink could<br />bring to vibrant life with quick<br />stipple strokes and a thousand<br />heartfelt dotsDaniel Abdal-Hayy Moorehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05692776372807142753noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-16084933712497202472015-07-22T16:26:03.183-07:002015-07-22T16:26:03.183-07:00Thank you so much for this post, Tom! Those brush ...Thank you so much for this post, Tom! Those brush strokes are astounding. Definitely an argument for the material world.Norahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14439557611640319928noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-63228462573888923262015-07-22T15:58:55.784-07:002015-07-22T15:58:55.784-07:00wonderful Van Gogh "No one could produce work...wonderful Van Gogh "No one could produce work of such brilliance, so steadily, for long"...agree !!Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-17593950914968393652015-07-22T14:04:13.863-07:002015-07-22T14:04:13.863-07:00I'm still dazzled by them now, two and a half ...I'm still dazzled by them now, two and a half years after beginning to study them.<br /><br />The grand thing to take away from the letters, apart from the brotherly care, is the interest in the materials. <br /><br />The working understanding of the paints and their properties, the variables of their application, the longevity, the treatment of the painting surface.<br /><br />It's as in the relation between Turner and his father, perhaps, with the preparation of the canvasses -- these relationships of trust and mutual understanding, no nonsense, the materials, part of the work.TChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05915822857461178942noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-14269995746186784812015-07-22T12:12:01.148-07:002015-07-22T12:12:01.148-07:00His painting always seems to me as deliberate and ...His painting always seems to me as deliberate and lucid is his choice to end his life. <br /><br />There's a clear delight in the work at hand. The surface matters as much as what is seen. We need to come back to the paint, the colour densities and the traces of decision to save us from the mythic sludge that would preserve him as some kind of idiot savant. <br /><br />You look through these images and begin to truly understand what makes Vincent a great painter.<br /><br /> Mose23https://www.blogger.com/profile/01100756913131511440noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-84886094681271887632015-07-22T12:04:33.995-07:002015-07-22T12:04:33.995-07:00Many thanks, Hilton and Amy. Vincent is honoured, ...Many thanks, Hilton and Amy. Vincent is honoured, and loves you very much. And we're with Vincent on that. Everyone is invited to come right up close to the paintings. There's nothing so lovely as yellow-impasto-nose!<br /><br />The people who managed to get up close enough to photograph the brushwork are our heroes of the day.<br /><br />Just don't ever try that at the Met, kids.<br /><br />But what goes in Detroit and Cincinnati -- different story, happily.<br /><br />America was discovered so that everybody in it could think Vincent was nutty, just like them!<br /><br />Ah, poor van Gogh! Never to escape the loony bin of received opinion! All the high-class pretend loonies wanting him to be strategically nutty just like them!<br /><br />Mad posterboy for Depakote, flailing a wet paintbrush!<br /><br />True fact btw... speaking of loony... we've got this extremely impertinent demented stalker/heckler troll who won't go away and thinks everybody's bipolar. <br /><br />Every day in the comment box, a half dozen impertinent, personal, confessional, boastful, meretricious, abusive, ignorant, hateful -- and long! -- and really, really pretend-loony!! -- "comments".<br /><br />They die in moderation. Our patience has worn thin. Moderation in all things hasn't worked. The demented comments keep on coming.<br /><br />The last fourteen messages sent along by Crazy (to put a name on this curious alien life form) have constituted a sort of prolonged defense of schizophrenia, though nobody was asking, on grounds that, if you're rich enough, you can get away with acting-out in public.<br /><br />Or as one of the missiles in today's salvo put it smugly --<br /><br />"got tons of money in the bank and crazy is relative"<br /><br />Und so weiter.<br /><br />That's San Francisco for you, in a nutshell. Accent on the nut. (And the tons of money, of course.)<br /><br />Only problem here, today, is, poor van Gogh, if the best he can hope for is to become just another mugshot in Crazy's rogue's gallery of artistic headcases. I was worried... Crazy's always here first thing... but then the day was saved. Hilton and Amy! Two terrific smart not-crazy poets! The joy!<br /><br />We toasted Vincent and Hilton and Amy with a fortifying 40-litre slug of absinthe. We agreed all the best minds of every generation are the ones that have... uh. minds.<br /><br />Sorry, Crazy, but when I think van Gogh, I don't think "nuts".<br /><br />I think "genius".<br /><br />And yes, Crazy, there's a difference.<br /><br />In this last summer of his life van Gogh turned out a magnificently expressive painting almost every day. Working without "tons of money" and under intense pressure of self-demand, in a sort of darkling delirium<br /><br />His breakthrough in learning to "stitch" canvasses, so that a 50 cm square turned into a 50x100 rectangle, was decisive. <br /><br />Thus the wide wilderness of the wheatfields.<br /><br />No one could produce work of such brilliance, so steadily, for long.<br /><br />He'd never have been able to pull it off if he was what Crazy wants him to be -- just another garden variety headcase, with too much ambition, too much money, and too much time on its hands.TChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05915822857461178942noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-20566616084978253942015-07-22T09:34:44.210-07:002015-07-22T09:34:44.210-07:00There seems to be no end to the beauty, turbulence...There seems to be no end to the beauty, turbulence and serenity this blog brings into my life. Getting to view these gorgeous paintings that knock one off ones feet, like giant ocean waves, from so many perspectives, is wildly illuminating. You can see every twist and blob and dollop of paint, and how they all roil together. Exquisite color. The added texts and commentaries bring things further into focus emotionally, aesthetically. Better than a museum visit (the guards would NEVER let one get this close to the paintings!)Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17366797667126527825noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-73647763425971435152015-07-22T09:18:46.061-07:002015-07-22T09:18:46.061-07:00Stunning. So close to the brush strokes I feel I c...Stunning. So close to the brush strokes I feel I can step inside them, to another world separate from the image you see when stepping back. What a genius. His palette itself is magnificent.Hiltonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04497545378045907642noreply@blogger.com